Did Sweden, with its minimal restrictions, really get it right in the fight against Covid? – The Irish Times
Swedish woman Karin Lindström will never forget the moment she had to tell her father, who lives with dementia in a nursing home, that her elderly mother had died suddenly in 2020. She called out from the parking lot below and told him: “Mom is dead !”
Her story will touch many, kept away in the pandemic from loved ones during their last moments or when tragedy struck. Two years later, she is upset by the lack of debate in her home country about why Sweden went solo on Covid-19.
Why, she wonders, in its rush to limit disruption and protect the economy, is no one today calling out what she believes is the lie at the heart of its stated public health priority: that the elderly should be protected from the ravages of the pandemic.
While Lindström was denied access to her father, her cousin – an earthbound flight attendant – was retrained as a nursing home assistant and allowed into homes to visit other people’s elderly fathers and grandfathers, without testing and without protective equipment.
“No one wants to remember any of this now. I used to suspect that we Swedes were spoiled and naive and even a bit arrogant. But I never realized we could be so shallow,” she told The Irish Times.
Each country had its own pandemic experiences, the virus finding and exploiting weaknesses in our bodies – and societies – but a leading Swedish Christian group later described the treatment of elderly Swedes in the pandemic as “structural euthanasia”. Others called it a modern revival of the medieval Norse ritual Ättestupa, where the old and infirm were reportedly encouraged to jump off cliffs rather than become a burden to their families.
When Covid-19 reached Europe in early 2020, Sweden emerged as an outlier with a looser approach to restrictions than its European neighbours. Lockdowns never happened, guidelines for travel and working from home were voluntary and masks were effectively non-existent. Daily life continued, shops and primary schools never closed, testing and tracking – particularly of arrivals into the country – dismissed as “too complicated”.
The first shock came on March 19, 2020, when its Nordic neighbors, alarmed by Stockholm’s light reactions, closed their borders to Sweden for the first time since World War II. Four days later, around 2,000 researchers at Swedish universities signed a petition protesting the strategy – but it was widely ignored by the Swedish media.
‘Herd Immunity’
Instead, all eyes were on chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, a uniquely powerful and popular figure who on April 4 explained his pandemic strategy: “Herd immunity is the only way to stop the spread in any reasonable way.”
While he enjoyed huge public support, aided by Swedes’ traditional high levels of trust in their authorities, the British medical journal The Lancet condemned his “capricious and cynical” attitude. As cases increased, certain restrictions were imposed – a ban on large gatherings and closures of high schools and universities. But when a dejected King Carl XVI Gustav delivered his Christmas message in 2020, he said that Sweden had collectively “failed”.
Critics believe that Sweden’s achievements are only average when compared to densely populated European countries such as Germany and Switzerland. A more realistic comparison, they say, is neighboring Norway
So has it failed? Sweden noted much milder subsequent pandemic waves in 2021. A final government commission report from February 2022 counted 13,000 deaths and, in its top line, concluded: “Sweden has weathered the pandemic relatively well and is among the countries with the lowest excess mortality over the period 2020–2021. ″
It has been challenged by furious critics, many of whom have contributed to a new book, Sweden’s Pandemic Experiment, (published by Routledge and is available to download for free). They say that Sweden’s performance is only average when compared to densely populated European countries such as Germany and Switzerland.
A more realistic comparison, they say, is neighboring Norway with a similar population density and a restrictive, standard pandemic response. In Norway, with half the Swedish population, only 2,500 people died. Rather than “average”, critics of Sweden’s approach speak of “avoidable deaths”. “One can assume that between 10,000 and 12,000 lives were lost in Sweden due to the Swedish government’s inaction,” write the authors Sigurd Bermann and Martin Lindström in Sweden’s Pandemic Experiment.
After a positive top line, Sweden’s state Corona Commission’s report tore apart the country’s strategy, saying its measures were “too few and should have come earlier”. “Sweden should have opted for more rigorous and intrusive disease prevention and control measures,” it concluded. There was no plan to protect older people or at-risk groups and “additional measures should have been taken to try to slow down the transmission of the virus in the community”.
This would have bought the government time, it said, but the government showed a “one-sided dependence” on Sweden’s powerful Public Health Authority (PHA) and Anders Tegnell. Basing national policy on the decisions of an individual was “not a satisfactory arrangement”.
Already early on, Sweden’s pandemic was an insightful experience. The most energetically attacked, publicly and in the media, were those who argued for masks and lockdowns
The report’s message was clear: Sweden was unprepared for the pandemic, its politicians did too little for the general population, nothing for the vulnerable and were too deferential to unelected experts. Sweden’s social democratic government refused to accept the report’s conclusions – even after they were echoed in a second report from the Royal Academy of Sciences. – There are many reports and many expert groups and I believe that the report is the opinion of that group, says Lena Hallengren, Sweden’s former Minister of Social Affairs.
Energetically attacked
Swedish officials insist that many of their moves had proven correct: despite fewer mandatory restrictions, more than 80 percent of Swedes said they had voluntarily limited their social lives and observed social distancing. Sweden’s youngest school-goers avoided the struggles of their peers elsewhere caused by lost vital classroom years: not just teaching hours but developmental and social skills.
Already early on, Sweden’s pandemic was an insightful experience. The most energetically attacked, publicly and in the media, were those who argued for masks and lockdowns. In February 2021, Sweden’s radio devoted a 20-minute report to a private Facebook group challenging the government’s pandemic narrative, run by Irish-born Swede Keith Begg. His group of 200 members was presented on the radio as a secret organization threatening national security.
For Begg, from Limerick, the report and a hostile response of threatening messages, the experience was “like something from an authoritarian state”. He left Sweden for good, telling The Irish Times: “Sweden has put itself on such a pedestal of exceptional arrogance.”
Since February’s critical commission report, Sweden has rolled up its exceptional Covid tent. The head of the Public Health Agency and Sweden’s epidemiologist Anders Tegnell have moved on. (The Public Health Agency did not respond to repeated interview requests.) There have been no political consequences, and Covid-19 was ignored in the last election campaign. For good reason, says Swedish political scientist Andrej Kokkonen: centre-right opposition parties, now in power, supported the government’s pandemic strategy while in opposition.
– No one has an interest in having this debate, it wouldn’t look good for anyone, says Professor Kokonnen at the University of Gothenburg. “Besides that, I think people liked to be a little more free than anywhere else. Today, they are more concerned about the cost of living.”
The elderly made up 90 percent of the Covid deaths but had no additional economic “benefit” to society. The other group that was hit hard were Swedes with a migrant background, often front-line workers
One of Sweden’s most popular books about its pandemic is The flock of journalist Johan Anderberg. In his fast-moving story – a TV version is coming soon – Anderberg argues that the rest of Europe focused too much on the death toll and too little on the knock-on effects of lockdowns: on mental health, domestic violence and sexual assault in the country. home, missed development goals, medical check-ups and surgery, all this now becomes visible.
“Sweden went more or less in the opposite direction but its results were not noticeably different from those of other countries,” he insists. While he says Sweden embraced “freedom” in 2020 and is hailed by libertarians worldwide, Anderberg sees an embarrassed silence in pro-lockdown countries over how their restrictions “were of limited value”.
It has sparked outraged counterclaims in Sweden that its exceptionalism was based on utilitarianism and racism, given that the costs of Sweden’s approach were borne disproportionately by two groups. The elderly accounted for 90 percent of Covid deaths but had no additional economic “benefit” to society. The other group that was hit hard were Swedes with a migrant background, often front-line workers who care for the elderly, drive buses, clean offices and wait tables.
“Massacre of the Elders”
Intercultural studies expert Tobias Hübinette points out how Sweden’s extreme right in the September election condemned the “massacre of the elderly” that built the post-war welfare state – but no one mentioned deaths in the immigrant communities that keep Sweden going today. – These people have no voice in Swedish society and their death must not be acknowledged, says Dr. Hübinette, lecturer in migration and intercultural studies at Karlstad University. “If you admit that you have failed them, you have to admit that much more failure in terms of integration and everything falls apart.”
Three years after it came to Europe, the legacy of Covid-19 in Sweden is how the majority of the population had the easiest pandemic in the Western world by forgetting – or ignoring – vulnerable minorities, now left alone with their suffering. Like all opportunistic viruses, Covid-19 found and exploited the weakest point and has left an awkward question: who belongs in today’s multicultural Sweden?